Re: [A-List] US elections 2004

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>
To
> We are already facing the attempted imposition of new touch-screen voting
machines across the south that generate NO PAPER TRAIL, the manufacturers
and programmers of which have suspicious ties to the Republican Party.  It
is
> becoming a huge issue in local elections here in North Carolina.
--
>From what I understand, the problem is actually, from a techie point of view
(which I'm not) worse. The actually program code, the internal workings if
you will, are all off the tables. The machines are programmed and only
servicable by the people who own the copyright and built them, a series of
Republicans.

Personally, I don't see how one can talk of the analysis of the "election"
in 2004 meaning anything since this has become the "last line of defense"
for the bourgeois.  Stan again:

>>This points again, I think, to the critical task of developing Black
political power, beginning at the municipal and county levels, and not
necessarily along the ideological lines that white progressives might
prefer.  A Black comprador is often easier for communities to hold
accountable than a white vestigal planter.
---
I appreciate this much and agree with both the sentiment and the tactic,
butn I guess my question goes deeper. From now on, it can go like this: Tell
us a polling result as far as the opinion poll, then repeat the desired
number, change it oh-so-slightly on election day and have the computer belch
it out.

So, the question is: What do we do to make the reality of this have the meat
it needs? to partaphrase, what is the political rhetoric we are going to use
that does justice to this? This is gravely worse than anything Mugabe or
Slobo ever did, even if one accepts the very worst reports put out by any
news agency.

Yes, I'm being demanding. I guess it's because inside almost all discussion
about what the Republicans (Bush Junta) are planning, going to do next, who
they will attack or (most often) when include some reference to how the
electoral process is guiding their thinking. Well, popular perception, in
lesser degrees but still greatly, may animate the Junta-- but not the
electoral process at all.

How can we talk about the Republicans doing X,Y or Z for fear of losing to a
Democrats when they have stolen the last election and since had what amounts
to a coup inside the rulking circels and now they own the copyright and only
access to the voting results? I can see a day where another Democrat gets
into office. That day would arrive when it is "better" for the oilist Junta
that he be there (PR,
in other words).
I am fully aware how Orwell this sounds. Reality is strager than fiction,
and I'm not currently operating as an author.

Macdonald